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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: willcousa who wrote (40180)	11/30/2000 7:09:06 PM
From: Math Junkie	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

OT Re: "She had two decisions to make." I count at least six. (1) She issued an opinion that manual recounts were illegal except in the event of a machine break-down; this opinion was later contradicted by the courts. (2) She claimed that she had no discretion to waive the November 14th deadline; this opinion was later contradicted by the courts. (3) When the Circuit Court ruled that she had discretion on whether to accept returns after November 14th, she had her legal team come up with a list of criteria for exercising that discretion which just happened to reinforce her previous view that the reasons for recounting in this case were not valid. How convenient. (4) She petitioned the Fla. Supreme Court on November 15th to stop the manual recounts. This petition was denied. (5) When the Fla. Supreme Court gave her the choice of opening her office last Sunday, or accepting returns on Monday morning, she picked the choice which just happened to favor the campaign which she had participated in. Again, convenient. (6) When one of the counties asked her to accept an amended return 1.5 hours late, she refused, in spite of the fact that the county had expended thousands of man-hours in a good faith effort to do an honest recount. The canvassing board violated the court's order by missing the deadline, but I can find nothing in the order which would have prevented her from accepting the return. It said that she "shall accept" returns filed by the deadline, but it did not say that she "may not" accept returns filed after it. Indeed, since the court made so much of the fact that she had discretion, and the late return was submitted between the two alternate deadlines which the court had set, it would be far-fetched to argue that the court would have had a problem with her acceptance of it. Furthermore, her refusal resulted in 150 or so voters' being punished for the tardiness of the canvassing board, which is something the Supreme Court had clearly indicated was not acceptable. a311.g.akamai.net "If she disregarded either date she was going to be in court so fast her head would spin and her decision would be the sole focus of the inquiry. The way she went the statute and the court decision are the primary foci of the inquiry." She got called into court anyway, and her actions were definitely the focus of attention - she was mentioned dozens of times in the Supreme Court opinion. So that argument doesn't wash. Besides, public servants are supposed to have the courage to do what is right. She has courage all right, but I can find no evidence that ensuring an impartial outcome is in any way on her list of priorities. All of the actions listed above involved discretion. All were resolved in favor of the campaign in which she participated. How convenient. If she had been co-chair of the Gore campaign, and had resolved all those issues in favor of the Gore campaign, would the Republicans be claiming conflict of interest? You can count on it.